Keeper of the Flame
by acaelousqueadcentrum
Summary: Blizzards and burns, or how to kindle a flame that keeps going out.


_Played with fire and I was burned_  
 _Gave a heart but I was spurned_  
 _All this time how I have yearned_  
 _Just to have my love return_

* * *

She's always cold, so cold.

It's hard, being on her own. Hard foraging for her meals, hard finding shelter that will keep out the strong winds. It's hard having no one to talk to, no one to tell her that everything will be okay.

Still, it's easier than the alternative. Easier than going home, than seeing the mixture of fear and awe on the faces of her friends, her family.

She'll stay.

She'll survive.

Somehow.

* * *

The reports come in every couple of days or so. Her scouts spy on the Sky Prisa from afar, return with intelligence that Clarke is alive, that Clarke is still out there, alone, in the wild, wild woods.

It's not spying, Lexa tells herself after they leave, it's not obsession.

It's just sensible. Clarke is living on her land, trespassing in her territory.

Any other leader would do the same, Lexa tries to make her head believe.

She never quite manages.

* * *

She dreamed of snow on the Ark. Dreamed of sticking out her tongue into the cold air and catching the delicate, doomed flakes on her tongue, just like in the story her father used to tell her before bedtime.

The reality is somewhat less than magical. It starts like rain, and as the sky grows darker and the ground grows colder, the heavy droplets begin to sting against her flesh. Freezing and frozen, the weather is relentless in its persecution. Maybe this, Clarke thinks to herself as she curls tighter and tighter around her own body, maybe this is her penance, maybe this is her cross to bear.

The fire flickers weakly, pitifully, and the world turns white while she struggles to sleep.

* * *

The first snow of the year is not unexpected. The sky has been warning them for days.

Finish up, it seems to whisper in the wind. Batten the hatches, unpack the foodstuffs, pile the firewood high, writes the sky into the clouds.

The skywatchers warn her in the morning that this will be a long winter, bitter and cold, and she orders her warriors and her scouts to gather up the lonesome, those who choose to live outside of the village, in the surrounding woods and fields. If they want to survive, she tells her people, they'll return with you and stay until the rivers run free of ice again.

Lexa assumes Clarke will do the same, return home to her people until it's safe to leave again.

She should have known better.

She's always underestimated the Sky Prisa.

* * *

Dry wood is scarce and food scarcer. The animals have gone to ground and a thick blanket of snow now covers the ground with no sign of melting away.

At night, Clarke burrows into a bed of leaves under a large pine. She's cleared away the dead and dry branches, the old pinecones and grasses, and dug a small pit with her hands. Every evening she builds a small fire to fall asleep next to, and every morning she wakes to cold ash and colder ground.

Maybe it's the quiet.

Or maybe it's the cold.

Either way, she doesn't dream.

Not anymore.

* * *

Her scouts half-drag, half-carry a wild, shouting man into the village, demanding to see the Commander, and Lexa steps out of her tent to see what's causing all the commotion.

It's the sky-boy, Bellamy. The man inside the mountain. His clothes are torn and filthy, stained with mud and blood, and far too thin for their winter weather. And he's thin, much thinner than she remembers, his face gaunt and pale.

She waves her scouts away, and the guards who have joined them, and brings him into her tent, eyes challenging him to try something, anything.

But he doesn't. He sits while she heats water, barely allows the tea to brew before he gulps it down.

"Lexa," he says, and she doesn't bother to correct him on the etiquette of addressing a Heda, "Clarke–is she here?"

And Lexa stops what she's doing, cutting off a hunk of bread and cheese to fill his empty belly, and stands still.

Of course.

She should have known.

Clarke's never done anything for herself.

Not once.

Of course she wouldn't do this either.

Lexa calls for her guard.

* * *

It comes to her one morning as she shivers and trembles, whether from the cold or the hunger she can no longer tell. It's an old memory, and maybe more fantasy than reality at this point, but honestly, Clarke thinks, what's the harm in trying.

She breaks a large branch off of her pine and begins to whittle one end down to a point against the side of a rock. The spear is unwieldy and not all that sharp, but it's the best she can do.

She walks to the small pond where, until the ice slowly grew to cover it, she used to drink and bathe. Now, she walks slowly out toward the middle of the ice, sharp rock and long spear in hand, until she finds a place where she thinks it will easier to poke a hole through, to see if it's true that the fish are still swimming around under their cold, cold roof.

By the time she has a hole large enough to try to spear for some food, her knuckles are bleeding and she can no longer feel her fingers. But there's a hole, and she thinks she can see movement underneath.

One jab, two, three, and nothing.

Maybe she's scared them away, she thinks, and rolls to her side, preparing to make her way back to the shore.

And then she hears it, a crash.

And then she feels it, the water covering her head, the cold pulling her under.

And then she doesn't feel anything.

* * *

There's a storm building, the clouds are pregnant and ready to unleash another torrent of snow on them.

No one should be preparing to head out into the woods, away from home and people and warmth.

Lexa knows as much, and knew it before Indra said it to her. Still, she must.

Indra can handle the village in her absence, her people can help the Sky Clan get comfortable in their temporary homes.

This, Lexa needs to do.

And alone.

She will not allow anyone else to risk losing their lives for her, for the debt she owes the Sky Prisa.

And it has to be her, she tells Indra, who sits and scowls at her like the trainer scowls at his unruly pups, because she knows that if there is anyone Clarke might listen to, it will be her. It will be someone who carries the same burdens.

* * *

Suddenly there are hands around her and a body against her and then, then Clarke can breath again. Cold, delicious air. It fills her lungs and for a moment, she just lays there, looking up at the clouds as snowflakes fall and stick to her wet, cold face. She barely even hears the oaths and swears of the person who pulled her out of her icy death.

And then she's being dragged across the ice, and it's not comfortable but she can feel it, so maybe that's something.

The water clears from her ears and the angry muttering becomes clearer. A voice she recognizes–Lexa–calls her "idiot" and another word she doesn't know but can't be anything but an insult.

In a moment, Clarke thinks, she'll give Lexa some of her own back, but after she closes her eyes, after she sleeps and takes care of this exhaustion that's settled into her heavy bones.

* * *

The stupid _branwoda_ almost drowned, Lexa thinks as she pulls Clarke's heavy, sodden body toward the cave where she left her horse when the snow became too much for him to handle. It's not far, but the weather and the dead weight she carries make the journey long and tiresome.

The sky is dark by the time she's found the entrance, and the wind has picked up fiercely, whipping the fresh, falling snow around the trees. But the fire she left for Fife still burns, and after she lays Clarke down at its side Lexa stokes and feeds it until the flames lick warmly at the air.

And then, and then, she turns to Clarke.

* * *

Hands pull at her, tug at her limbs.

Someone curses as they undo the buckle of her pants, and Clarke kicks out, struggles to get away. But the hands are stronger.

And soft.

And gentle.

And accompanied by Lexa's voice in her ear.

And despite her anger, despite the things that stand between then, Clarke calms, lets Lexa work.

* * *

Their clothes are hanging on the other side of the fire, which has died down a bit but still fills the small cave with a pleasant warmth, and they lay on a bed of furs, skin to skin, wrapped up in a heavy woven blanket. It's the quickest way Lexa knows to get the Sky Prisa warm again, to use the heat of her own body, and it seems to be working. Clarke's trembles and tremors have stopped.

Now, the blonde lays facing the fire, tucked tight against Lexa's chest, ass settled into the throne of the heda's hips. She slips in and out of consciousness, her body and spirit exhausted beyond measure, and every now and again she sighs and burrows herself deeper toward Lexa's body. It's paradise and it's hell and Lexa wishes the moment would never end, wishes she could go back and make a thousand different decisions and still, somehow, end up like this.

She lets her eyes drift shut, lets her heart slow to match that of the woman in her arms, and she's almost, almost asleep when she hears Clarke whisper out into faint light of the cave.

"This isn't what I meant when I said I wasn't ready."

It's playful and it's grateful and it sets Lexa's heart afire with hope.

"Shof op, Skai Prisa."

* * *

 _When the fire is burning out_  
 _And the angels call my name_  
 _Dying love will leave no doubt_  
 _And I'm the keeper of the flame_


End file.
